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Google loses German 'auto-complete' case

An anonymous businessman has won a court battle against Google in Germany over auto-complete predictions he claimed damaged his reputation. The search engine's Australian arm says it already has a process for dealing with complaints about auto-complete results.

Transcript

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PETER LLOYD: The German version of internet search engine Google will be forced to filter its auto-complete function after a court ruling in that country. The legal action was taken by an anonymous businessman who argued his reputation was damaged when his name was linked to words such as 'fraud'.

An Australian legal expert says he's experienced the problem first hand and is calling for governments here to act before the courts are forced to.

Rebecca Brice reports.

REBECCA BRICE: What do you do when you Google your name and the word fraud comes up? If you're a businessman, you sue Google. That's what's just happened in Germany and the court sided with the businessman.

The man, whose identity is anonymous, claimed his reputation and that of his company were affected by the search engine's auto-complete function. That's where the search engine suggests possible search terms, in this case 'fraud' and 'scientology' came up.

The federal court of justice in Karlsruhe issued a statement on its judgement.

COURT STATEMENT (voiceover): In not a single search result is a link between the plaintiff and Scientology and/or fraud apparent.

REBECCA BRICE: But the court also ruled Google won't have to pre-empt the problems.

COURT STATEMENT (voiceover): The operator is as a basic principle only responsible when it gets notice of the unlawful violation of personal rights.

REBECCA BRICE: The ruling is expected to have implications for Bettina Wulff, the wife of the former German president who's also suing the internet giant. Her name links to the word 'prostitution' through auto-correct.

Rick Sarre is a professor of law at the Adelaide University. He says he's experienced something similar.

RICK SARRE: It reminds me of when I was running for office three years ago and I had previously acted for a paedophile, and so suddenly my name and paedophile comes up in a search engine. Well that's going to harm me politically, it may even harm me business-wise, it might even harm my prospects in trying to get a job.

And I think one of the issues around Google and search engines, and the whole internet of course is that typically our technology races ahead in leaps and bounds, and the law, whether it's public law or private law kind of struggles a bit to keep up. So typically something will happen, it'll be tossed in front of the courts, and the courts typically at that point have to kind of see what the remedy could be or ought to be and if there's no particular remedy its thrust back into the parliament's gaze.

But in relation to this particular matter it seems entirely reasonable that the Germans have said to Google 'listen you have an enormous responsibility here, make sure the information you provide is accurate. If you don't, then we'll provide a remedy, if you don't retract it immediately'.

REBECCA BRICE: He says it can be extremely damaging

RICK SARRE: Of course at this stage there are remedies if for example someone puts something on a blog or a website or Google itself, put information in which is wrong, and someone is responsible for that wrongness, people to have a remedy now, typically if not in defamation which is a bit tougher, certainly in what's called breach of confidence.

However there's always been a defence, there's been a defence for internet service providers and search engine providers to say 'well we're just the messenger, you know you can't blame the messenger here, without us you wouldn't be having searches at all and to put the responsibility on us to make sure all of this information's correct is to ask us to do too many things'.

So there's always been a defence for people who are carrying the information. What is required now is a rethink about the responsibility of those carriers, particularly when they're the ones who are providing the information and allowing the information to go to millions of people simultaneously.